Last week, I saw mention in Reader's Digest (it was a gift subscription) that talked about how retailers are able to use your IP address & cookies to help determine what price to charge you online. They didn't say it was actually happening yet though.
They implied that, for instance, if your IP address pointed to a relatively affluent area, you might be charged a little bit more. Or, depending on what sites you've visited or how many times you've been on their site, they might charge a little more or a little less.
I just saw on the Consumer Reports blog site where this is now happening. Someone with cookies for Hotwire was shown one price ($48.95) to rent a standard car per day, but upon clearing cookies, the price to rent the same car was $27.95 per day. http://consumerist.com/2012/11/01/what-a-difference-a-few-browser-cookies-can-make-when-you-shop/
(And don't forget, most people don't even have a clue that flash cookies act like cookies, but aren't called cookies, and certainly aren't cleared when they clear their cookies - unless they are savvy enough to have add-ons to do that for them.)
Now, I've noticed that over the past few years, the number of "hot deals" has gone down significantly. In fact, most of the younger members may not even have a clue what "hot deal" used to mean. (It used to mean that after you purchased $150 worth of stuff, used your $30 off $150 coupon, submitted rebates, etc., you ended up with an extra $10 in your pocket, and a big pile of stuff for free. Now, it seems to mean, "hey, the xbox is regularly $299.99, now it's on sale for $294.99, omgwowz, I've never seen it that low." - less than 2% off barely qualifies as even a lukewarm deal.
I think one thing that killed the hot deals is the proliferation of websites that point these things out to people with nothing better to do than hit F5 all day, hoping that some company will honor an error on their site. Perhaps this actually spells that there might be some hotter deals in the future - deals that are only available for people smart enough to clear cookies, or edit cookies, tweak their DNS, use proxies, etc.
They implied that, for instance, if your IP address pointed to a relatively affluent area, you might be charged a little bit more. Or, depending on what sites you've visited or how many times you've been on their site, they might charge a little more or a little less.
I just saw on the Consumer Reports blog site where this is now happening. Someone with cookies for Hotwire was shown one price ($48.95) to rent a standard car per day, but upon clearing cookies, the price to rent the same car was $27.95 per day. http://consumerist.com/2012/11/01/what-a-difference-a-few-browser-cookies-can-make-when-you-shop/
(And don't forget, most people don't even have a clue that flash cookies act like cookies, but aren't called cookies, and certainly aren't cleared when they clear their cookies - unless they are savvy enough to have add-ons to do that for them.)
Now, I've noticed that over the past few years, the number of "hot deals" has gone down significantly. In fact, most of the younger members may not even have a clue what "hot deal" used to mean. (It used to mean that after you purchased $150 worth of stuff, used your $30 off $150 coupon, submitted rebates, etc., you ended up with an extra $10 in your pocket, and a big pile of stuff for free. Now, it seems to mean, "hey, the xbox is regularly $299.99, now it's on sale for $294.99, omgwowz, I've never seen it that low." - less than 2% off barely qualifies as even a lukewarm deal.
I think one thing that killed the hot deals is the proliferation of websites that point these things out to people with nothing better to do than hit F5 all day, hoping that some company will honor an error on their site. Perhaps this actually spells that there might be some hotter deals in the future - deals that are only available for people smart enough to clear cookies, or edit cookies, tweak their DNS, use proxies, etc.
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